The present invention of the container apparatus addresses broadly a problem in the overpopulation of the invasive brown tree snake that was most likely inadvertently introduced into Guam probably from New Guinea nearly seventy years ago; supposedly via post World War II cargo shipments. Since its introduction, the brown tree snake has colonized the entire island of Guam, at densities of up to about 33 snakes per acre in Guam or approximately 1 to 2 million brown tree snakes inhabit the 200 square mile island of Guam. These venomous brown tree snakes have caused the extinction of most of Guam's native birds, bats, and lizards; also the brown tree snakes are feeding on young poultry and other small livestock; in addition to threatening human health and safety. Further, the brown tree snakes also cause electrical power outages throughout Guam via wiring damage causing millions of dollars in electrical infrastructure structural damages and lost revenue. The desire for practical technology to aerially deliver baits for brown tree snake control is widespread and has existed for decades. Interested parties include the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of the Interior, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the United States Office of Insular Affairs, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Government of Guam, and others.
In answer to the above identified problem; Federal, state, and territorial governments are committed to reducing the brown tree snake population in Guam, thus also helping to prevent the dispersal of brown tree snakes from Guam to adjacent areas and mitigating the negative effects of the brown tree snakes on Guam. The dispersal of brown tree snakes from Guam via the unintentional movement of snakes as a result of shipping or travel is a very real danger to all islands in the Western Pacific basin and sections of the United States mainland.
To prevent the spread of the brown tree snake, the United States Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services (WS) program partners with the Government of Guam's Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the United States Department of the Interior's (DoI) Office of Insular Affairs, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. A variety of brown tree snake control tools and strategies have been employed, including the use of traps, fumigants, hand capture, snake-detector dogs, public education, and an oral toxicant. A particular toxicant, named acetaminophen, was granted a registration by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 based on research conducted by Wildlife Service National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) scientists. The acetaminophen toxicant is currently used in bait stations around shipping ports, the airport, and other easily accessible areas of the Guam Island to help eradicate the brown tree snake. The motivation and desire to develop and implement a practical technology to aerially deliver baits for brown tree snake control has existed for decades.
In summary the benefits of eradicating the brown tree snake population in Guam would be;                1. Facilitating the reintroduction of the endangered Guam Rail and other native species extirpated by the brown tree snake and the restoration of Guam's native ecosystems.        2. Reducing the number of brown tree snake bites to humans and pets (Currently, 1 in 10 emergency room visits in Guam are due to a brown tree snake bite.)        3. Reducing power outages and electrical power infrastructure damage from brown tree snakes electrocuting themselves on power lines and other structures (Currently costs Guam $1-4 million in damages and lost productivity annually.)        4. Preventing brown tree snake colonization colonization on Hawaii or other vulnerable islands in the Pacific (The economic costs of potential brown tree snake colonization to the Hawaiian Islands alone are estimated to be as high as $2 billion annually.)        5. Saving millions of dollars in brown tree snake control costs. The current brown tree snake management protocols are primarily based on the use of traps and snake detector dogs. The overall annual budget for research, educational campaigns, and control efforts (trapping, bait stations, snake detector dogs, aerial baiting, etc.) is approximately $7.5 million annually. The use of toxic bait is currently limited because of the cost and ability to reach all the brown tree snakes in an area. Current bait production depends upon manually inserting an acetaminophen pill into a dead mouse and hand placing dead mice in bait stations. In addition, since the brown tree snakes are arboreal (tree dwelling), a large portion of the snakes will not be exposed to the baits on the ground surface. Employment of a cost-effective aerial baiting strategy will significantly reduce the cost of conducting a brown tree snake baiting program. It is estimated that a Guam snake eradication effort would require the delivery of about 5.2 million baits. At an estimated cost of about $0.99 per bait, this effort would be less costly than the currently annual expenses for brown tree snake control on Guam. However, currently, efforts to reduce the brown tree snake population across Guam have been fairly limited because snakes from rugged and remote areas of Guam have been able to successfully repopulate areas that were once cleared.        
In looking at the prior art in this area, starting with U.S. Pat. No. 5,813,165 to Dougherty, Sr. disclosed is a biodegradable snake trap suitable for deployment from an aircraft, the snake trap comprising a hook with line attached, embedded in an egg, see FIG. 1. The egg in Dougherty is encased in a frozen fluid and disposed within a container to protect the egg, again see FIG. 1. The snake trap in Dougherty is dropped from an aircraft flying over the area in which the trap is to be deployed wherein a grapple hooks onto tree limbs to prevent the snake trap from falling all the way to the ground, and a descent restrictor slows the rate of aerial descent of the trap. When the frozen fluid melts in Dougherty, the container falls away and exposes the egg, thus attracting snakes, further when a snake swallows and crushes the egg, the hook lodges in the snake's vital organs and kills the snake, again see FIG. 1. In Dougherty, the exposing of the snake bait in the form of an egg is solely based upon the temperature thawing of the egg, thus there is no selectable control on when timing wise that the bait is exposed to the potential snake which may result in wasted bait.
Continuing in the prior art related to ejecting a cartridge not in the snake baiting arts, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,403,225 to Watkins disclosed is an aerial display amusement device that comprises an elongated, hollow tube containing a plurality of pieces of confetti within the hollow interior of a tube. The user in Watkins holds the lower end of the elongated tube and waves the tube forwardly in an arcuate path so as to generate sufficient centrifugal force to eject the confetti out of the tube and upwardly into the air. In the preferred embodiment in Watkins, the pieces of confetti are of four-sided, tetragonal shape, and pluralities of pieces of confetti are stacked in bundles within the tube such that the bundles exit the tube upwardly in the air and then burst into an aerial display of color and motion as the individual confetti pieces fall downwardly. Watkins is a manually operated device; see FIG. 6, whose primary purpose is to widely dispense the confetti from the tetragonal shape and having the confetti stacked in the tube in a manner that the tetragonal shapes are parallel to one another for maximum dispersion upon release from the tube via manual creation of centrifugal force.
Further, in the prior art related to ejecting a cartridge not in the snake baiting arts, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,692,335 to Watkins, disclosed is a non-explosive system for manual hand launching of streamers from a hollow tube comprising; an elongated hollow launching tube having an open end when launching streamers, a plurality of spiral wound streamers positioned in the launching tube, the streamers being positioned in rows along the length of said launching tube, plus at least the streamers in the row closest to the open end having open hollow cores before insertion into the launching tube and having collapsed cores when inserted into the launching tube, as shown in FIGS. 2, 3, and 4. Thus in Watkins, this is to bias the streamers radially outwardly and form a frictional resistance against ejection of the streamers from the tube, and wherein at least the streamers in the row closest to the open end have central axes about which the streamers are wound, and wherein the central axes are oriented parallel to each other, see FIGS. 1 and 6. As opposed to Watkins '225 (confetti launching) this Watkins '335 is operational to focus on the launching of streamers manually which requires a significant amount of exit force emanating from the manually generated centrifugal force which is forced to be higher from the frictional resistance mentioned above, and also the packed streamers should have higher mass or weight the closer they are to the center of manual centrifugal rotation in order for the higher mass streamers to “push out” the lower mass or weight streamers that are farther from the center of manual centrifugal rotation.
Yet, further continuing in the prior art related to ejecting a cartridge not in the snake baiting arts, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,748,870 to Heidenreich, et al., disclosed is an ammunition round assembly having a combustible cartridge. In Heidenreich, in one embodiment, the ammunition round assembly comprises a cartridge body made of a combustible material consumed in combustion upon firing the ammunition round assembly, wherein a base is releasably connected to the cartridge body's bottom end portion. A retention member in Heidenreich is positioned in a locking groove defined by groove in the cartridge body and the base with a projectile being positioned adjacent to the top end portion of the cartridge body, and an attachment sleeve releasably connects the projectile and the cartridge body. The attachment sleeve in Heidenreich has a connection member releasably engaging the connection member on the top end portion of the cartridge body, wherein the attachment sleeve is configured to resist longitudinal motion of the projectile relative to the cartridge body until the ammunition round assembly is fired. Heidenreich is primarily designed for 105 mm cannon rounds to help overcome the problem of a steel cartridge plastically deforming in a cannon barrel due to high internal combustion pressures which caused to steel cartridge to lodge itself, i.e. gutting stuck inside of the cannon barrel after cannon firing.
Next, further continuing in the prior art related to a cartridge that opens about a hinge not in the snake baiting arts, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,486 to Davis, et al. disclosed is a hermetically sealed compact case that contains a cosmetic substance. The compact case in Davis includes an integral two-piece insert having a cover piece coupled to a base piece by an integral living hinge, see FIGS. 1, 2, and 6. In Davis, the cover piece of the insert has a circular cavity with a pair of ridges, while the base piece has a peripheral wall that slides within a groove to form a hermetic seal as between a pair of halves of the compact case. As the integral insert in Davis obtains the closed configuration, the evacuated air makes a distinctive audible sound, indicating to the user that the hermetic seal has been established to help ensure that in a closed state the compact case halves have an air tight seal to better preserve the compact case contents from drying out.
What is needed is a container apparatus for improving the way to effectively eradicate the brown tree snake in their arboreal environment using baits. Thus in a broad sense, a delivery apparatus is needed for brown tree snake baits which could be dropped from an aircraft or thrust upward from the ground surface and with the bait becoming entangled in the thicket growth or forest canopy as the bait fell to the ground, being that the brown tree snake is an arboreal species, entanglement in the forest canopy is crucial for effective baiting. In addition to improving the performance of the needed baiting apparatus, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Wildlife Services (WS) brown tree snake control program would also need of a system for mass producing of the bait cartridges (being required in the millions) and an automated device for reliable and systematic aerial delivery of the bait cartridges.
Ideally a biodegradable bait cartridge and delivery system would be utilized that can disperse up to about 4 baits per second desirably resulting in a bait about every 15 meters of lateral forest canopy via helicopter or fixed wing aircraft or alternatively ground surface launching of bait cartridges also resulting in a bait about every 15 meters of lateral forest canopy. The development of a biodegradable bait cartridge and automated aerial bait delivery system would finally allow for large-scale, simultaneous control of brown tree snake populations throughout Guam thereby helping to prevent brown tree snake repopulation.